A friend’s older brother had a Mini…bought for the usual reasons. A few months in he realized it was a mistake, and hated it for the 18 months it took to raise money to replace it.

I had a TJ Wrangler for a time…I preferred the YJ I later had; the TJ with its airbag dash felt too much like a shrunken minivan. But it was reliable, reasonably thrifty (once I pulled the front prop shaft when I found myself with long freeway commutes) and with the coil springs, comfy. A little bouncy; that’s to be expected with the short wheelbase.

…which was longer than the MG Midget’s, I’d bet.

The four cylinder was really all you needed, unless you planned on pulling stumps with it for a living. Especially when you consider the four with FI put out more power than the 304 V8 did in the Jeep CJ in the carbureted age. The four was…pretty common, although probably not the most common.

I’m not really into small cars, but that Midget is pretty nice looking. And yes, as per previous times CC has discussed the chrome vs rubber bumper MGs, I vastly prefer the rubber ones as they make the cars look more modern. 🙂

A nice example of a Midget. I learned how to drive in the snow in one o’these one long ago December in the Orem, Utah area. The car’s flaws became even more evident after the introduction of the Fiat X1/9, a much more modern sports-car design. Not much to love about a car that required one to open a valve in the engine compartment to turn the heater on in the cold of Winter.